The present disclosure relates generally to energy absorbers for use in a vehicle, for example, to reduce injuries (e.g., to occupant(s), pedestrian(s), etc.) and/or to reduce vehicle damage.
Increased importance has been placed on methods for minimizing the amount of injury suffered by a person during an impact with a moving vehicle as well as the amount of vehicle damage. Different regulatory committees assess automotive-pedestrian and occupant impact performance globally. Depending on the overall performance, vehicles are assigned a cumulative safety rating. Each and every component of the vehicle needs to satisfy the specific impact criteria in order to ensure a good overall rating for the vehicle.
Due to the regulatory requirements and the desire to have, and commercial advantages of having, a high overall safety rating, vehicle manufacturers are continually adding components such as energy absorbers to the vehicle. Although energy absorbers generally provide safety benefits and/or lesser insurance cost, they add some weight to the vehicle, and restrict styling freedom due to additional packaging space requirements. Hence, vehicle manufactures are continually striving for high performance energy absorber systems with reduced weight and/or packaging space. Another approach has been to modify the geometrical configuration of an existing energy absorber design. However, this approach has not resulted in a significant weight change. These existing low performance systems generally require large amounts of packaging space to meet the impact regulations. A large packaging space, however, reduces the vehicle styling freedom. For example, many common energy absorber systems include foam as the energy absorbing element. The foam systems have lesser energy absorption efficiency (e.g., than injection molded plastic energy absorbers) and thus require more packaging space to absorb the same impact energy.
As a result, there is a continuing need to design an energy absorber that will deform and absorb impact energy to attain a good vehicle safety rating with a decreased weight and lower amount of packaging space resulting in increased design freedom. Furthermore, since different vehicle platforms have different components, due to their inherent geometry and assembly requirements, they require different energy absorber designs to satisfy the various impact criteria. A flexible solution to this problem is sought.